Harappan Civilization’s Psychedelic Secret about Soma. Crown of Goddess
Mohenjo-Daro Mother Goddess Adorned With Divine Mushroom Symbolism
The Indus Valley Civilization, also known as the Harappan Civilization, was one of the earliest civilizations in the world. Located in the fertile Indus River valley, it existed from around 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. The people of this vast civilization developed sophisticated techniques in crafts, metallurgy, urban planning, and more. While the Indus script remains undeciphered, much evidence gives clues about the culture’s religious life and connection to later Indian traditions.
Terracotta seals and figurines provide insights, as do remnants of sacrificial altars. One influential theory is that the Vedic culture centred in the Indus Valley before migrations spread elements of it more widely. A key debate arises over what links this civilization may have with the Rig Veda, a foundational Hindu religious text compiled in the 2nd millennium BCE. Intriguing clues come from images and rituals that seem to have endured for thousands of years. The insights terracotta statuettes provide into Proto-Shiva and goddess worship connect the Harappan Civilization with later eras in startling ways.
Some of the most revealing clues about the genuine identity of the Indus-Sarasvati society may have come from the terracotta statuettes. These clay figures give profound insights into the nature of this civilization itself. Terracotta figurines and seals have enlightened Proto Shiva as Pashupatinath — the lord of creatures. Shiva is referenced as the god Rudra in the Vedas. There have been Havan kundas or Sacrificial Altars for the Vedic Fire service. In any case, the most remarkable proof of Vedic origins comes from a Harappan female model (3,300–1,300 BCE), presently with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA. I didn’t find the image, but here is a very similar one.
Description of the Figurine
This ceramic fertility sculpture stands around 8 inches tall. It is of terracotta, displaying a wide-hipped fertility Goddess with tremendous jewellery and unusual dabbed plates around her head. Dr R. Gordon Wasson and Dr Stephen recognized this as the divine mushroom of Soma in the headdress of Harappan terracotta figures. Some evidence indicates headdresses and crowns in Harappan and Vedic art were decorated with gold, silver and semi-precious stones and jew.
Soma is a splendid Red Mushroom with white spots that have psychotropic properties. It was a hallucinogen broadly utilized in Central Asia, Siberia, Iran, Afghanistan and Northern India. It was likewise broadly utilized in the Mayan or Aztec development of South America (Guatemala).
Speculation on the Mushroom’s Significance
Gordon Wasson speculated that this Vibrant Red Fly Agaric Mushroom is the mythical Soma of the Vedas. It was a psychotropic plant that prompted rapture, life span and clarity of mind. It gave creative bits of knowledge and made the subjects euphoric. They felt an outright nonattendance of dread and agony, which is the reason the warriors prized this plant so exceptionally. The Vikings it is said consumed this red Mushroom before going to fight. It filled them with a red-hot rage so to speak and made them unmindful of torment and dread. The worth of such impacts in battle can be effectively envisioned. No big surprise it was so exceptionally valued. No big surprise the Vedic war god Indra was so enamoured with Soma. He ingested it before each fight that he battled with the Dragons and vritras — the tearing ones of legend and story and won every one of his fights — politeness Soma.
The Significance of Soma in Vedic Culture
So what was this profoundly valued Soma? Soma is an exceptionally significant design of the Rig Vedic Indo-Aryan development. Indeed, the whole ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda is committed to Soma and contains probably the most melodic and impeccable verse at any point formed by man. The Soma plant was crushed in mortar and pestle stones, strained in fleece and gathered in copper utensils. It was blended in with Ghee (clarified spread) or curds and offered to the Gods in elaborate Soma Yajnas or Soma sacrifices. It was ingested in the same amount by the Brahmin ministers as warriors. It prompted disposition height, elation and rapture. It prompted extraordinary lucidity of psyche, wakefulness and inventive bits of knowledge for the Vedic Rishis.
It likewise prompted an outright deficiency of dread and agony; and subsequently enormously upgraded battle execution in the combat zone. Indra is said to have ingested Soma and assaulted and killed Ahi and Pani — the mythical serpents and the Vritras — the wolves and “tearing ones”. Soma had monstrous ramifications for the Rig Vedic development. That prompted a quest for the organic personality of this plant called Soma. From an investigation of the Rig Vedic verses in acclaim of Soma, R. Gordon Wasson (The Divine Mushroom) had attracted up an organic profile of the Soma plant and recognized it as the Amanita Muscaria (Fly Agaric) Mushroom found in the mountains (close Pine trees). It is a splendid red mushroom with white spots that look so wonderful. It is hallucinogenic/psychotropic.
The Vikings, it is said consumed it before going to fight and it prompted in them a red-hot fury, which their foes basically could not withstand in the war zone. The Rig Vedic Aryans devoured a similar for its disposition height and lucidity of thought, the euphoric conditions of upgraded attentiveness and innovativeness where the Rig Vedic verses were ostensibly gotten. Different researchers guarantee that Soma was an Ephedra hedge with Golden stalks.
In RV 9.113, Soma is described as a god and praised for stimulating poetic inspiration: “We have drunk the Soma; we have become immortal; we have gone to the light; we have found the gods.”
RV 8.48 says “Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilarating stream, effused for Indra to drink.” This verse talks about soma being pressed and prepared as a drink for Indra.
Many verses like RV 9.66–68 praise Soma for its energetic and intoxicating qualities which stimulated the composition of the Vedic hymns: “The sacred songs have come to me, the verses born of reflection, as Soma goes to the sieve” (9.66.10).
Verses in Rig Veda in particular contain numerous references to the pressing, drinking and energizing qualities of Soma during Vedic rituals, with poets composing verses seemingly under its euphoric influence.
RV 9.84 associates Soma with inspiration and heavenly transport: “With songs they bind to the loom the fast steed homed in the wood…They balm with meath [Soma] the shouting warrior wrought of golden mail.”
Global Nature of Mushroom Symbolism
In any case, the Gordon Wasson view of Soma as a brilliant red Mushroom is more common and spreads across numerous societies however far off as Siberia, China and even South America. Shamanism was a worldwide phenomenon in old times. The polka-dabbed Mushroom imagery can be found in all Hindu and Buddhist craftsmanship. What was thought to be ceremonial umbrellas in Hindu and Buddhist models and works of art are effective portrayals of these Red Mushrooms. Indian Gods and Goddesses hold these mushrooms in their hands. These heavenly mushrooms were encoded into the pictures — frequently “covered up just because”, as implications of a prompted rapture. Soma, the divine mushroom, finds shockingly across-the-board portrayal in the Shamanic Art of Europe, Central Asia, India, China and even the Mayan and Aztecs of South America.
Implications for the Identity of the Harappan Civilization
The revelation of the Divine Mushroom theme in the terracotta models of the Harappan development gives an astonishing hint into the genuine idea and character of the Harappan progress per se. The Harrapans knew Soma, an archetypically Rig Vedic idea, and addressed it in their speciality and symbolism. This scores up one more striking similitude between the supposed Indus Valley custom and the Rig Vedic culture. In the arrangement of outlines underneath, the Soma mushroom is displayed as a crown around the head of a female goddess of ripeness. The female richness goddess. from Mohenjo-Daro with Soma mushrooms exhibited about her head. See the incredibly comparable model from The Maya progress with the mushroom imagery.
This exceptionally huge hint about Soma gives a reasonable sign that the Harappan progress was maybe similar to the Rig Vedic Aryan development. The Aryans along these lines were not attackers/transients from Central Asia. The Indus-Sarasvati tracts were possibly the centre region and the unique home of the Indo-Aryans. It was the eco-fiasco of the drying out of the Sarasvati that constrained portions of these unique Aryans to relocate out to Afghanistan, Central Asia, Southern Russia, Eastern Europe and even the Middle East. A striking hint has now come from the ‘Divine Mushrooms’ displayed around the head of that terracotta model of a richness goddess with liberal hips and forms from the Harappan progress. It conceivably establishes a piece of the across-the-board administration of Soma that was normal to Shamanic societies all over the globe — from Europe, Central Asia, China, Iran, India, Afghanistan and however far off as South America. Robert Gordon Wasson composes, “What was this plant called Soma? Nobody knows. Seemingly its character was lost some 3,000 years prior, when its utilization was relinquished by the ministers. The soonest strict creation of the Indo-Aryans called Brahmans, talks about substitutes to be utilized for Soma in the custom, however, come up short of depicting the first plant.”
Photo by Ian Healey.
Identification of Soma as Amanita Muscaria Mushroom
One trusts”, Robert Gordon Wasson writes in his book Soma of the Aryans, “that Soma was a Mushroom — Amanita Muscaria, the fly agaric, Der Fliegenpilz of the Germans — the Fausse Orange or the Monche or Garpandin of the French, the Mur Khomor of the Russians.” This blazing red mushroom with white spots flecking its cap is familiar all through Northern Europe and Siberia. It is frequently recorded in Mushroom Manuals as deadly harmful, however this is bogus. As of late it has been a focal element of the love of a few clans in Northern Siberia, where it has been consumed during their Shamanic meetings.
The presence of this heavenly mushroom in the imperial headdress of a richness goddess figure from Harappa is a huge pointer maybe to the actual character of the Harappan individuals.
Harrapan Chessboard
The imprint of the Rig Vedic Soma culture is presently plainly observable in the tracts of the Indus-Sarasvati development. The pity is that most of the locales found stay unexplored. There is a need for a significant program to burrow these locales and recuperate more proof seriously to set up the genuine idea and character of this old development. Undeniably more than Mesopotamia and Iraq — this fits the bill to be the soonest support of human progress per se. The terracotta model with the heavenly mushroom plants of Soma displayed around its head gives a huge hint to the personality of the Harrapan individuals who dwelt on the banks of the consecrated Sarasvati. One more huge hint comes as the essential round of chess that one experiences in the Indus Valley progresses. The chess pieces are formed like mushrooms or small phallic images — yet more hints to the commonality of the Harappan Civilisation with the idea of the Soma mushroom of rapture. Note the chess pieces formed like mushrooms in the Harrapan Chessboard.
The terracotta artefacts of the Harappan Civilization provide remarkable new evidence regarding the roots of Hindu religious tradition in the Indian subcontinent. The fertility goddess statuette with hallucinogenic mushrooms conforming to the description of the Rig Vedic soma plant points to significant cultural continuity rather than an external Aryan invasion. The soma-inspired mushroom imagery links the material culture of the Indus Valley with the spiritual ethos of the Vedas. Furthermore, the chess pieces shaped like psychoactive fungi denote knowledge of this quintessentially Vedic sacrament. As archaeology unearths more Harappan sites, the analysis should shift from simplistic migration models to indigenous connections between this enigmatic civilization and later Indian societies that produced Hindu scriptures. This striking material parallels demand a scholarly paradigm shift.
Source: Bakshi, G. D. (Maj. Gen.). (2021). The Sarasvati Civilization: A New Paradigm in Ancient Indian History. Self-published.
